Editor’s note: In this fifth and final article in her series about her breakthrough treatment for breast cancer, Muriel Smith shares her visit to the Israeli company, Ice-Cure Medical that invented the procedure. Paint the Town Pink

My trip to Israel went off without a hitch. Traveling with friends from Our Lady of Perpetual Help/St. Agnes parish, on a tour with a travel company which had previously taken me to Greece, Turkey, Ireland, and Italy, the trip could only be made more exciting for me now that I knew I would be meeting with the people who had invented the procedure and equipment to perform cryoablation…freezing to death the breast cancer that had been discovered only 47 days before it was ablated.

Sue Jebsen, the nurse who traveled the United States with the equipment used in this trial procedure, and Will Irby, Ice-Cure Medical’s key person in the USA, had made all the necessary contacts and explained to me that while the staff in Israel had seen and spoken with physicians who had done the procedure, they had never had the opportunity to meet with a woman who had undergone it. Sue was in the room when Dr. Kenneth Tomkovich had performed the approximate 45-minute procedure which killed the small tumor in my right breast. It was she who first called that evening to see if I would meet with the staff in Israel while on my trip.

TRENTON — Gov. Chris Christie’s planned Thursday afternoon meeting with Israeli president Reuven Rivlin in New York City has been canceled, the Governor’s office said today. Rivlin is scheduled to return to Israel after addressing today’s noontime meeting of the UN General Assembly, which was convened to commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day. A spokesman for the… Read the rest of this entry »

The Monmouth County Israel Film Festival proudly presents an entertaining, thought-provoking and high-quality line-up comprised of the best Jewish and Israeli films from across the world. This year’s festival will provide you with your pick of award winning documentaries, dramas and comedies!

A nuclear deal struck between Iran and world powers in Geneva was “bad” as Tehran had obtained “what it wanted”, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Sunday. “This is a bad agreement that gives Iran what it wanted: the partial lifting…

The American Jewish Council once again did an amazing job of making sure we received a broad understanding of what is going on in Israel today. On Thursday we visited Ramallah in Palestine and met with the spokesman for the Palestinian Authority negotiating team. Both Israelis and Palestinians remain hopeful of positive discussions when Secretary of State John Kerry visits next week. He has a huge challenge ahead of him with these peace talks. Everyone brings to the table thousands of years of their people’s history as well as their personal experience to the discussions.

Friday we visited Yad VaShem, Israel’s Holocaust Museum, and it was an incredibly moving experience. It is difficult to imagine how a people moves forward after 6 million are murdered, including 1.5 million children. The museum serves as a stark reminder that there is true evil in the world. The resiliency and spirit of the Jewish people is astounding.

The individual memorials also serve as a reminder to “Never Forget.” I was particularly drawn to the one for a doctor who took care of children whose parents were missing or killed. When the children were ordered to be deported to a camp he went with them, reasoning he wouldn’t leave them alone in life nor should they be alone in death. He is just one of the many heroes in the holocaust.

Before coming to Israel I read the book StartUp Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle by Dan Senor and Saul Singer. It describes how Israel’s policies on immigration, research and development, and military service have lead to a tech boom here. Israel has more companies on the NASDAQ than Korea, Japan, Singapore, India and all of Europe combined. We heard from the CFO of an angel investment company today, who explained Israel’s multifaceted success story. A portion of that success can be attributed to the elite tech units in Israel’s Army.

Before entering college most of the nation’s young people receive millions of dollars in training in the military where they also have access to Generals. Students call teachers by their first names here, which they say leads to a business culture that’s flat and very helpful in a start up environment. Israel has a Chief Scientist who has the responsibility of fostering research and development. There are also great incubator programs subsidized by the government that include free educational seminar speakers and workspace. A percentage of the property tax portion of the rent for tech company start-ups is forgiven.

I am here in beautiful Israel as part of Project Interchange, a program of the American Jewish Council. Despite the worldwide travel alert, I feel very safe.

For my first seminar, we had a fascinating introduction to Israeli society and politics with Dr. Elinat Wilf, a former member of Knesset. She described Israel for us as an idea of the mind. At the end of the Seder you say, “To next year in Jerusalem.” The worldwide Jewish community decided to make that happen literally by founding Israel. It is an incredibly diverse nation of immigrants. It is a Jewish state, which can be confusing for Americans, who are used to the separation of church and state. Zionism is an idea about bringing ethnic Jews together. I found it very surprising when our speaker identified herself as a Jew who is an atheist. She said many people in Israel are non-practicing Jews religiously, but practice the culture. Israel has a very sizable minority population – approximately 20 percent Muslim and Christian.

Those who say a nuclear Iran would stabilize the Middle East “have set a new standard for human stupidity.”

In an interview to be aired on NBC’s Meet the Press this morning, Israeli Prime Ministers Benjamin Netanyanhu likened the government of Iran to the terrorists that have been killing American citizens and destroying American property in 21 Middle Eastern countries this week:

01.I’m an elderly Combat Infantryman of World War II, who served under Patton in 1945 in the Ruhr and Czechoslovakia. My division helped liberate one of the Holocaust death camps.

02.I’m a retired New Jersey college English professor. My area of specialized expertise is recurrent themes in literature, drama, and film: Shakespeare, Ibsen, Fellini, and Hitchcock. I have a flair for spotting key elements that pluck the heart out of a mystery that investigators often miss.

03.Some of my studies relate to politics and revolution. For example, on the classic film The Battle of Algiers, that is all about the current subject of suicide bombers and recruitment of Islamistguerrillasagainst the West, as in Afghanistan.

04.I presently have come across a startling study by an eminent (very eminent) Holocaust and Jihadist scholar that relates absolutely to the current controversies about the Mosque at Ground Zero, Koran desecration, whether Muslimism is a religion of peace or war, and the jihadist call for the destruction of Israel and Israeli Jews.

05.Since the work and conclusions of this scholar (whose book was published early in 2010) seem to have been missed in current media discussions, I’d like to bring this to your attention here so that this discovery might be transmitted to New Jersey and America’s Jews, who’ve been supporting Barack Obama almost 80%, second only to his Black voter support of more than 90%.

06.Some of the other names I’ll be dropping in support of my and this scholar’s conclusions are former Mayor Ed Koch, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, Commentary editor Norman Podhoretz, and First Amendment enthusiast Nat Hentoff. Like myself and the scholar, they are all octogenarians. So a case might be made: Don’t Trust Anyone Under 80.

07.And, also like myself, they are all Jews. For as the famous feminist Phyllis Chesler points out (and as even Larry Summers must agree): ANTI-ZIONISM (especially among the Left in general and among the Left faculty in higher education in particular) IS THE NEW ANTI-SEMITISM. (Louis Farrakhan is an Obama supporter. David Duke is a stalwart anti-Zionist.)

07a.Let me repeat: ANTI-ZIONISMIS THE NEW ANTI-SEMITISM.

08.The eminent scholar is Richard Rubenstein (Harvard Ph.D., Yale fellow, and named by Florida State University the Distinguished Professor of the Year). His bookis Jihad and Genocide.

09.His message, in distinct, concise form (about 6 minutes) is in this video: Play it and replay it. Copy it and send it to your friends, especially to your Jewish friends, most especially to your Jewish friends who’ll be voting in the midterm election this November.

11.In this video Dr.Rubenstein (a) refers to Obama as a “menace”; (b) points out that advisors to President Truman in 1948 (State Department heads Gen.Marshall and Dean Acheson) strongly advised Truman not to vote in the U.N. for Israel as a state, and that “it is Obama’s intention to correct the historical mistake of the creation of the state of Israel”; (c) that Obama due to his family heritage is extremely pro-Muslim to the point of “wanting to see the destruction of Israel”; (d) that Obama’s family has a distinct Muslim orientation: both his father and stepfather were Muslims, his sister and brother are Muslims, and Obama was born a Muslim; (e) that Obama is anti-Western Europe, especially England, who on moving into the White House immediately sent back to England the bust of Winston Churchill that had been given us; (e) that he symbolically bowed to the Saudi Arab leader on greeting him; (f) and that he is for a nuclear freeze, thereby depriving tiny Israel of its effective weapon against Arab and Iranian military.

12.Rubenstein (like myself) is a specialist in psycho-analysis, having written a psycho-analytic study of St.Paul. (My study of Alfred Hitchcock is a psycho-analytic interpretation of Hitchcock’s films.) So, at least to me, the most telling about Obama’s Muslim heritage, was his notorious slip of the tongue when during an interview and asked what his religion was, he pre-consciously answered: Muslim.

13.We should note that the only time most American Jews voted for the Republican presidential ticket was in 1980 against Jimmy Carter because of Carter’s anti-Israel stand, as is Carter’s position today.

15.Even fellow octogenarian Mayor Ed Koch voted for Obama (indeed campaigned for him.) Even Jewish ultra-pro-Israelite Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz voted for him! (Dershowitz said that he knew Obama as a law student of his and liked him.)

16.But, like indeed many 2008 voters for Obama — Democrats, Independents, Jewish and non-Jewish alike — have started to change their minds. Recent polls show that among Jewish voters backing Obama 78% have gone down to 42%.

17.When Ed Koch saw earlier this year Obama’s treatment of Netanyahu, he called it “outrageous” and felt that Obama is “willing to throw Israel under the bus to please the Muslim nations. I believe that honestly.” (See Koch video below.)

18.I hardly think that Dershowitz too would vote for Obama again. (Recently, Dershowitz threw his support for a Republican because of that Republican’s strong pro-Israel stand against his Democratic rival’s weak stand. Dershowitz recently: “Israel is here to stay. Obama may not be here to stay.”

21.Earlier this month, from the Daily News: The threat of radical, extremist Islam will last at least a generation, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair warned Sunday.“If these people could have killed 30,000 or 300,000 [on 9/11], they would have.” Blair compared Islamic fundamentalism with revolutionary communism.“It’s the religious or cultural equivalent of it, and its roots are deep, its tentacles are long and its narrative about Islam stretches far further than we think,” he said. Blair’s comments, less than a week before the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, echoed some of the fears voiced by opponents of building a mosque two blocks north of the Trade Center site.

21a. Blair has warned that radical Islam is the greatest threat that the world is facing today. According to him, radical Islamists believe that whatever is done in the name of their cause, including the use of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, is justified.

22.The following video by Alan Dershowitz is long, over an hour. But Dershowitz is a great speaker, dedicated to fairness to Israel; and he covers just about the whole political picture, especially likening Obama’s current view to Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement policy toward Hitler in the 30s.

23.Dr.Rubenstein has a long article on why he wrote his Jihad and Genocide book. When the first plane struck the first tower on 9/11, most people thought this was probably an accident. It wasn’t until the second plane hit the second tower that it was realized that this 9/11 strike was no accident. I used to show my students a brilliant CBS documentary showing George Bush’s Chief of Staff, Andrew Card, whispering into Bush’s ear, at the strike of the second plane, that we were being attacked. (The documentary is generally not shown because, as I suspect, it shows Pres. Bush (a) in danger at the time, commander in chief, and (b) fully in command and not Dick Cheney at all. (Cheney at the time was in Washington, Bush in Florida, Cheney being picked up bodily by the Secret Service and carried to a shelter.)

24.Rubenstein says that when the first plane hit the first tower, he “immediately” knew we were being attacked, by Islamists, because of his background in Jihadist Islamic studies.

25.For the record, here are some excerpts from the long article since the book and article are hard to come by

26.”As is evident from much of the material in this book, there is more than a little affinity between National Socialism and Islamic extremism. As partners in World War II, both sought the utter destruction of the Jewish people, a project Islamists have never abandoned.”

27.”Islamist enmity toward the infidel West, such as was manifest on 9/11, is not a consequence of a small, unrepresentative group ‘hijacking’ a religion whose ‘teachings are good and peaceful.’ On the contrary, “the kind of Islamist hostility that drove Islamist terrorists to act on 9/11 and all too many other occasions is deeply rooted in centuries.”

28.”Unfortunately, neither I nor the overwhelming majority of Harvard students of the period had the slightest inkling of the writings of such Islamist thinkers as Hassan al-Banna (1906-1949), Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966) and Syed Abul A’ala Maududi (1903-1979). Uncompromising enemies of Western civilization, their quest for universal Muslim domination shaped the worldview of the perpetrators of 9/11 and may affect the lives and destiny of every man, woman, and child in the twenty-first century.”

29.”Ten days after 9/11, President George W. Bush addressed a joint session of the United States Congress in which he sought to make a distinction between the perpetrators of 9/11 and the peace-loving Islamic mainstream. The president declared: ‘I also want to speak tonight directly to Muslims throughout the world. We respect your faith… Its teachings are good and peaceful. And those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah. The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying in effect to hijack Islam itself.'”

30.”In retrospect one can ask whether his statements or the somewhat similar sentiments expressed by President Barack Obama in Cairo on June 4, 2009 were accurate. In reality, Islamist enmity toward the infidel West, such as was manifest on 9/11, is not a consequence of a small, unrepresentative group ‘hijacking’ a religion whose ‘teachings are good and peaceful.’ On the contrary, the kind of Islamist hostility that drove Islamist terrorists to act on 9/11 and all too many other occasions is deeply rooted in centuries of Islamic tradition.”

31.Rubenstein goes on, “The fatal flaw of those who seek a two-state solution while downplaying the Roadmap lies in the fact that a critical mass of Muslims define the struggle against Israel as a defensivejihad against the infidels who raid the abode of Islam. Put differently, such Muslims believe they are under an unconditional religious obligation to expel the Jews who, they believe, have forcibly taken possession of a portion of the abode of Islam. Moreover, there have always been influential opinion makers and government leaders in the United States and Europe for whom the establishment of the State of Israel was an historic mistake and who would welcome Israel’s demise as the real solution to the problems of peace and stability in the Middle East.”

32.”

Diplomats and political leaders usually express their views with a measure of finesse, but not always. For example, speaking to an audience in Alexandria, Egypt in May 2004, Michel Rocard, France’s Socialist Prime Minister from 1988 to 1991, called the establishment of Israel ‘an historic mistake’ Similarly, shortly after 9/11, the late Daniel Barnard, Ambassador of France to the United Kingdom, declared at a private London gathering, that the current troubles in the world were all because of ‘that shitty little country Israel.'”

33.”We see this in the Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement, known by its acronym HAMAS, a document all too often ignored by political leaders The Covenant clearly and unambiguously states that Hamas’s long-term objective, the destruction of the State of Israel and the extermination of its people, is grounded in an unconditional religious imperative regarded as binding on all Muslims.”

34.”If the Holocaust has any meaning for Jews it is that they must believe those who promise to destroy them especially when they actively seek, as does Iran, the weapons with which to do so. They at least are telling the truth and intend to keep their promise if they can.”

35.Rubenstein concludes, “Having spent most of my career writing and teaching about the Holocaust, I now find myself once again confronted by sworn enemies of the United States and Israel who have promised to exterminate my people. With knowledge gained over many decades, I feel I have no option but to take these people at their word.”